You forgot to mention that Namecoin is backuped by the Bitcoin Network via merged mining, and even if the mining profit for NMC is nearly zero the hashing rate is almost equal than BTC and thus unreached by any other SHA256 encoded coin, check it against BCH in the charts (note that there are no other SHA256 encoded currencies available for a direct comparison beside BCH). The shown hashrates are Exahash per second (1 EH = 1.000.000 TH, current hashrates: BTC = 134.54 EH/s, NMC = 112.29 EH/s):

Seems so that the (mining-) community believes in Namecoin, and so one could come to the conclusion that Namecoin is the most trusted altcoin since the beginning of the crypto era. Even without any direct financial gain (for the miners) at the moment.